Twitter Bots flood platform to block news of unrest
The Guardian|November 29, 2022
Twitter has been flooded with nuisance posts designed to obscure news of the coronavirus lockdown protests in China, in an apparent state-directed attempt to suppress footage of the demonstrations.
Dan Milmo and Helen Davidson
Twitter Bots flood platform to block news of unrest

Chinese bot accounts - not operated by humans - are being used to flood the social networking service with adverts for sex workers, pornography and gambling when users search for a major city in the country, such as Shanghai or Beijing, using Chinese script.

Alex Stamos, director at the Stanford Internet Observatory, said the Chinese activity indicated the "first major failure" to stop government interference under Twitter's ownership by Elon Musk. He added that the actions appeared to be designed to limit international observation of the protests as access to Twitter is blocked inside China.

This story is from the November 29, 2022 edition of The Guardian.

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This story is from the November 29, 2022 edition of The Guardian.

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